The violent feud between Ireland’s two most notorious criminal gangs has claimed a fifth life, after a man was shot dead in what police believe was a case of mistaken identity.
The victim was shot six times near a pub in Sheriff Street, close to Dublin city centre, around 12.20pm on Thursday. Locals reported that a man in running shoes escaped from the area towards Spencer Dock.
The young man wounded in the attack later died in the city’s Mater hospital from head injuries.
Garda sources linked this murder to the ongoing gangland war between those loyal to Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, and Costa del Sol-based Irish criminal Christy Kinahan.
The intended target of today’s fatal shooting was an ally ofHutch, who had served a prison sentence for a cash transit robbery and was well known to the Garda Síochaná. But the young man who was killed instead had no apparent connection to The Monk’s gang.
Five people have now died in the feuding, which erupted in front of television cameras during the weigh-in for a European boxing bout at Dublin’s Regency hotel in February.
During a heavily armed assault at the hotel, gunmen loyal to Hutch shot dead 33-year-old David Byrne, a known associate of Kinahan.
The gunmen from the Hutch gang even wore body armour and fake garda uniforms to fool their way into the hotel in order to try to kill several members of the Kinahan gang, who were attending the televised event.
The Monk’s gang launched the attack in revenge for the murder of Hutch’s nephew, Gary, by Kinahan’s men in Spain last September. Gary Hutch was chased around his Andalusian apartment before being shot dead inside the villa because members of Kinahan’s gang believed he had betrayed an intercepted drug shipment they were in charge of, to the garda and Interpol.
In retaliation for the Regency hotel attack, gangsters loyal to Kinahan have since shot dead The Monk’s brother, taxi driver Eddie Hutch, 59, and later a cigarette smuggler Noel “Mr Kingsize” Duggan.
Gardai have sealed off the area around where the shooting happened and a helicopter has been deployed over central Dublin to aid the hunt for those responsible.
